It is Diaso Dike’s birthday.
“This birthday holds a very special place in my heart because I never thought I would live to see this day. When I was shot and left lying on the highway, I couldn’t have imagined surviving to witness another sunrise,” the Abuja resident posted on X on Wednesday.
On Monday and Tuesday, Dike detailed how he hired private trackers and paid officers of the Nigeria Police Force and the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) to track and arrest the kidnappers who abducted him in April, despite it being their duty.
Dike shared that he was kidnapped on April 12, shot by his abductors the following day, and had his car stolen. The kidnappers disabled the car’s tracker, complicating efforts to trace it.
“I was kidnapped on April 12 past 10 pm and shot on April 13th around 1 am,” Dike wrote.
“Around 9:30 am on April 13th, my friends attempted to track my car using the tracker I installed, but the tracker was removed around 10 am. Before the removal, calling the tracker’s number would make it busy and send the car’s live location. After it was removed, calling the tracker only resulted in a ‘switched off’ response.”
Following his release, Dike said he was determined to recover his car and bring the perpetrators to justice, even though his injuries posed a challenge.
“I had not made any transactions with the kidnappers, which meant there were no monetary leads to pursue,” he said.
“I was later transferred to another private hospital, where I took a private room. The doctors agreed to remove the bullet in my waist after a few days. On Sunday, April 14th, I started feeling better,” he wrote.
Hoping to use calls made by the kidnappers to trace them, Dike discovered his phone’s call logs had been automatically deleted.
“I remembered that the kidnappers had called my number that night using their phone while searching for mine. However, when I checked my phone, the call logs had cleared, as iPhones — especially mine — automatically deleted logs after two days,” he explained.
Determined, Dike contacted his network provider and sneaked out of the hospital with help from friends to visit their office in Awka. However, staff informed him that only their Lagos headquarters could retrieve the information and suggested he contact the Department of State Services (DSS).
At the DSS office, officers requested a formal petition but advised Dike to prioritise his recovery due to his visible pain and injuries.
“While writing the petition, I began to feel pain because I had missed my morning medications and was already stressing about my injury, and our car had an issue on the way that I had to walk a little,” he said. “Some of the DSS officers advised me to return to the hospital and come back later to submit the petition since the bullet hadn’t been removed, and I was limping badly.”
Dike said a breakthrough came when a friend introduced him to a private tracker who worked with the police. The tracker charged N300,000 after negotiation to retrieve details of the kidnappers and the last known location of the car’s tracker.
“I immediately called the tracker, and he asked me to meet him at the CPS police station in Awka. I fixed an appointment and, with my friend Zuma, went to meet him,” Dike wrote.
“I made an initial deposit of N150,000 immediately and promised to complete the payment upon delivery. He assured me he’d deliver within 24 to 48 hours.”
Dike said he also sought help from SARS in Awka, where officers demanded N800,000 to start investigating the case.
“Later that same day, I also visited SARS for man-force, but they demanded N800,000 for a start to take the case. I wrote a statement promising to return,” he said.
To ensure progress, Dike hired an additional tracker for N100,000 as a backup plan. On 16 April, one of the trackers successfully provided the last known location of the car’s tracker. However, police delays persisted as they sought a mobilisation fee.
HOW POLICE’S INACTION DELAYED SUSPECT ARREST
Dike said he was frustrated by the attitude of the police, so he took matters into his own hands and acted on the intel he had got, using the help of his friend (Zuma) who had recommended the first tracker to him.
The location was Amansea in Awka. Fortunately for Dike, the decision to act turned out to be a turning point in his frantic search for these criminals. He wrote that he found a compound that looked like a criminal’s den and his car was inside the compound.
“After searching the area for a while without success, we were about to leave when we noticed a compound along the road with a dusty Lexus SUV parked inside. The car looked like mine. I asked Zuma to drive closer so I could confirm, and it was indeed my car. Parked there. The compound looked like a criminal den,” Dike recalled.
At this point in his investigation, Dike knew he had to involve the authorities. He and his friend decided to contact the Investigating Police Officer assigned to his case. However, Dike said this move did not go as expected due to the police’s inaction.
“We stayed out of sight because the area seemed dangerous and our car glass was tinted, I asked Zuma to drop me nearby so I have my eyes on the car while he called the police but Zuma was scared that the kidnappers might recognise me and I was in no condition to run if something went wrong,” Dike wrote.
“We decided to inform the IPO in charge of the case instead. We contacted the IPO in charge of my case, informing him that I had located my car. He instructed us to return to the station for mobilisation and warned us to do nothing. We drove to the station and reported what we had seen.
“Despite the location being about 8 kilometres from the station, we had to wait for his permission from the DPO who insisted I pay for mobilisation and towing van and that he needed the DPO’s permission. After the delays, we finally left for the compound around 7 pm.
“Unfortunately, by the time we arrived, my car was gone. The car was nowhere to be found. Witnesses confirmed the car had been parked there for days and that someone had recently moved it. We returned to the station empty-handed.”
NENCHIN MOSES: FIRST SUSPECT
Dike’s escapade from the suspected kidnappers’ den yielded some results. He said he had confirmed from the resident that the car had been parked in the compound for days. He said he was able to narrow his search down to a ‘vulcanizer’ in the area.
“Upon questioning the residents, they confirmed that the car had been parked there for days. They also mentioned that someone had driven it away shortly before our arrival An eyewitness, who is a vulcanizer, told us that the first time we came and left, Nenchin returned to add air to the car,” Dike narrated.
“The vulcanizer asked him, ‘Is this not the car the police are looking for?’ Nenchin hurriedly got into the car and drove off. A few people confirmed they had seen him with the car, perhaps thinking I was dead. Some even mentioned that he often received cars with bullet holes to work on.”
Dike said the policeman who would volunteer to work requested that he pay N50,000. He said he made the payment and the officer swung into action.
With the help of the officer, Dike said he was able to find out who had bought the car and the proxy that sold the car to him.
“We met witnesses who said a man named Nenchin Moses had brought the car. Witnesses pointed us to a man and a lady who claimed her husband’s friend, Nenchin Moses, had brought the car to the husband. She was taken to the station for questioning along with one other guy,” he said.
“The husband later came to the station that night. During interrogation, the husband admitted that his friend Nenchin Moses, a mechanic, had brought the car”
Despite being deep into the investigation, Dike said the police officer requested an additional payment.
Motivated by the progress, he made the payment, but it didn’t lead to significant results when he employed the officer’s services that night. He later learnt that Nenchin Moses, the mechanic he identified as acting as a proxy, had travelled out of the state.
“He agreed to take us to Nenchin Moses’ house. It was already late, like 10 pm, and the senior officer insisted that I must pay him again so he could follow us to arrest Moses. I did and Zuma my friend drove us to Nenchin’s place at Ugwuoba Enugu close to Anambra,” Dike said.
“We drove there with some policemen and Nenchin’s friend Micah. When we got there, Nenchin Moses wasn’t home. Through his friend, we called him, and he claimed over the phone that he was on his way to Jos to see his sick mother, and that it was an emergency.
“It seemed to me that he was travelling with the car because it was quiet. We returned to the station around midnight with two suspects: Nenchin’s friend and another young guy who was connected to Moses.”
This adventure with the police ended with plummeted trust.
Dike said the police found out that he had employed the services of a private tracker and threatened to withdraw their help.
“We got to the station and the police learnt that I had paid a tracker they knew N150,000, it started an argument. They said they wouldn’t help me anymore, claiming that if I had given them the 150k, they would have found my car. They were all upset with me. But I was very interested in finding the people who wanted me dead, not the car. Later, my friend took me back to the hospital around 1 am.”
MOSES AND RABIU
At this point in his narration, Dike acknowledged that his body needed rest, and the pain from the bullet wound in his abdomen began to catch up with him. He said he had to let his friends take over from there.
Due to the misunderstanding with the police, he entrusted the task of locating his prime suspect to his trackers, as they had been successful the first time.
“I collected Nenchin Moses’ phone number and gave it to my trackers. The next morning, I couldn’t go to the police station because I was already stressed from the previous day, and in more pain. My doctor also complained that I had missed some medications and was overexerting myself, which worsened my injury,” Dike narrated.
“I decided to stay back and sent my friends to handle it. They went to the station and reached an agreement with the person arrested. Some representatives and an officer came to bail the mechanic and his wife, promising to provide Nenchin Moses.”
Dike said he eventually learnt of the location of the prime suspect in this case and was able to see to the suspect’s apprehension.
“With the help of a tracker, I learnt that Nenchin Moses’s phone was traced to Gombe. From there, he moved to Adamawa State and later headed to Jos. Through tracking, we identified his soft targets, including his girlfriend in Jos he was hoping to meet,” Dike shared.
“With the help of the SWAT team in Jos, we arrested Nenchin Moses on April 23, Tuesday, through his girlfriend. However, he did not have my car and denied knowing anything about it. He claimed he had never been to Adamawa State or seen a Lexus SUV.”
The arrested suspect would later give Dike the name of the person who had sold his stolen car to him.
Dike said he was able to narrow down the location of this new prime suspect, whose name he pegged as Rabiu, with the help of the trackers he had paid.
“While in detention in Jos, he (Moses) later confessed that someone brought him a car to fix, which he worked on and was paid in cash. He provided the name ‘Rabiu’ and his phone number, which I gave to my tracker. The tracking revealed that Moses and Rabiu met in Adamawa State, it shows they met at a point. My tracker provided the specific location of their meeting in Adamawa,” Dike recalled.
With the help of a relative in Adamawa and the police, Dike was able to track the location where the tracker had shown Nenchin and Rabiu, two key suspects, had met. However, he said they didn’t find his car there.
TRANSFERRING TO ANAMBRA SARS
One thing remained constant in Dike’s account: every time he enlisted the help of the police, he had to pay.
Mobilising the police to visit the site the tracker had indicated cost him money, and getting the police in Anambra to join him cost even more.
“I needed to bring Nenchin Moses to Anambra State to continue investigations and find out who tried to kill me. On April 24th, from the hospital, I went to the B Division in Awka, where the case was being handled, and pleaded with them to help bring Moses from Jos to Anambra,” Dike said.
“The DCO initially charged me N1 million for the operation, claiming part of it would go to the DPO. I pleaded and offered N300,000, which I could afford due to my piling hospital bills, but he refused. I contacted the DPO, who insisted on N500,000.”
Interestingly, Dike mentioned that despite pleading with the police bosses to mobilise at a lower cost, the Divisional Police Officer at the station he visited threatened to influence the release of the suspect, who had been held beyond the allowed detention period. Dike said he was eventually able to negotiate, driven by his determination to get to the bottom of the case.
The DCO eventually agreed to a N300,000 offer after much begging, with an additional fee. He provided a PoS account, and Dike transferred the N300,000. The investigative report was prepared, and after a few days, Moses was taken to Awka on May 1.
Dike also said that Moses had retracted his initial confession and hid evidence by deleting his WhatsApp messages. He further shared how gaining access to Moses’ social media, with the police’s permission, reinforced his belief that Rabiu would lead him to a breakthrough in the investigation.
“At the station, Moses continued to claim that two strangers had brought the car to him, asking him to fix the back tyre. They paid him in cash, he even denied he mentioned Rabiu while in Jos. With the police’s permission, I checked his WhatsApp chats. I couldn’t find relevant chats because he had deleted his primary WhatsApp,” Dike said.
“With the officer’s permission, I reinstalled WhatsApp on his phone. I found out he was given access to his phone while in detention in Jos, and I checked his conversations with Rabiu and noticed he had been communicating with Rabiu, but he deleted his chats with Rabiu on different numbers.
“Most of their chats had been deleted, but I uncovered messages revealing how they moved stolen cars from Benin, Asaba, Calabar, and Awka, and transported them to Adamawa and Cameroon.”
DISCOVERING THE THEFT RING
At this point in Dike’s narration, he finds out that Moses, Rabiu and another person named Abdul were in a car theft ring.
This discovery and Moses’ eventual confession did not help matters for Dike. He said he requested a transfer of the case to SARS in Awka because of the inefficiency of the police division. The SARS officers charged him to pay N500,000. He would eventually pay N200,000.
“I also found conversations with his friend Abdul, who appeared to be involved in the same car theft ring. Abdul was skilled at detecting and removing trackers from vehicles. Moses is a young boy in his middle 20s, is quite smart, he speaks well. Moses eventually confessed that Rabiu and Mohammed had brought the car to him,” Dike narrated.
“The police in Awka confirmed that Rabiu was a notorious criminal wanted in Awka since 2022. He had been involved in a case where his gang shot someone and stole two cars during an event in Awka. Some of the persons he stole from their cars also contacted me during my investigation. I even reached out to the man he shot in the leg in 2022 but he told me it gives him trauma and don’t want to talk about it.
“Given the inefficiency of the division, I requested that my case be transferred to Awkuzu SARS. On May 2nd, I, along with my friend Zuma and two officers, transferred Nenchin Moses to SARS. They charged me N500,000 but accepted N200,000 as a deposit.”
Dike’s persistence eventually paid off when he found the name of a new suspect: Buba and Mohammed. With the new information, he traced Rabiu, enlisting the help of a local while attempting to locate the mastermind.
“The next day, my friend Zuma and I went to Gariki, between Anambra and Enugu border where they sell cows, to meet an Alhaji we knew. We had purchased cows from them a few times in the past and introduced them to other customers. When we explained what Rabiu had done to me, the Alhaji felt terrible and promised to help,” Dike shared.
“He said he knew Rabiu very well, describing him as a notorious criminal giving them a bad name in the east. He also told us Rabiu’s elder brother, Dogo, lived nearby and revealed that Rabiu was originally from Gumbi in Adamawa State. The Alhaji provided me with some useful information, which I gave to my tracker.”
RABIU, THE MASTERMIND
Dike said that it was difficult to find Rabiu who, as a mastermind criminal, changed numbers too frequently.
He had paid his private trackers again to do the job of finding the suspect. According to him, one of the trackers even disappointed and blocked him from communicating.
“We focused on tracking three of Rabiu’s numbers, but it was challenging because Rabiu frequently moved and had access to Cameroon, where he transported most of the stolen cars. He had at least 10 different phone numbers. Despite tracking them via IMEI, every lead ended in a dead end, my trackers keep telling me the criminals have not put SIM cards on the phones,” Dike said.
“All to a dead end. The police tracker I paid N150,000 to help me get the numbers failed to deliver and later blocked me. I was too preoccupied with finding those who tried to kill me to dwell on it. In total, I worked with no fewer than 10 trackers, all of whom drained my finances significantly.”
Dike didn’t rely on just one source and eventually got results from another private service he enlisted. However, he said all his leads were disappointing, and he kept hitting dead ends.
His last hope for tracking Rabiu came from Enugu, where the private tracker traced a phone believed to belong to Rabiu’s girlfriend. This, too, according to him, turned out to be a dead end.
“Fortunately, one of the new trackers finally delivered results. He sent me the numbers of those who called me that night. At least small good news I was initially hopeful, thinking I now had another lead. However, upon tracing the number, it turned out to belong to one of the phones stolen that night,” Dike narrated.
“It was registered to the girlfriend of one of the victims whose iPhone 14 Pro Max was taken. Another dead end. Another tracker I hired later provided IMEI details indicating that the stolen iPhone was in Enugu. I mobilised resources to follow up, but that too turned out to be a dead end.”
Rather than get discouraged, Dike said he intensified his efforts to find Rabiu, who he believed was key to solving the mystery of his attempted murder. Dike learnt that Rabiu had been arrested once and tried to get the police to pull Rabiu’s criminal records.
“Tracking Rabiu’s numbers was frustrating, as all the lines were switched off. On June 20, one of the trackers managed to locate a new number belonging to a gang member named Buba. He was traced to Zaki Biam in Benue State. I sent someone to Benue with help from the police, but they couldn’t access the area because it was considered unsafe and required military intervention, which I couldn’t afford. I was told the police could not arrest someone there. Only the army has the power,” Dike said.
Beyond the financial cost of the investigation, Dike relied primarily on his privately contracted tracker, as his narration suggested. He only turned to the police for enforcement and arrests. Dike said his tracker traced Buba, the new suspect, to Taraba State. He also explained how he had to fund this investigation while simultaneously covering his hospitalisation bills.
“Two days later, my tracker obtained his new number and traced him to Taraba State. By this time, I was running low on funds. I had spent a lot on hospital bills, mobilisations, and tracking efforts, with each analysis costing N100,000. I was still determined to find those who tried to kill me. A Good Samaritan offered to assist me to mobilise the police to arrest Buba in Jalingo through a soft target, his girlfriend,” he added.
Before Dike could send the police, his uncle spotted his stolen car on the road and began pursuing it. Dike said he had to send money to mobilise the police to assist his uncle in apprehending the criminal and enforcing an arrest if necessary.
Thanks to his uncle’s quick thinking, the team successfully arrested the driver of the stolen car.
Dike’s breakthrough came after this mission. He said he’d find out that Rabiu was the mastermind after the police had questioned him.
“Under questioning, the driver admitted he bought the car for 4 million naira, paying 2.5 million naira upfront, with the balance still outstanding. When pressed to reveal who sold him the car, he agreed to take the authorities to the seller,” Dike recalled.
“The tension was overwhelming—I couldn’t stop wondering who they would encounter. And then, just as they arrived, there he was — Rabiu, the elusive mastermind, completely unsuspecting.”
“The moment he realised what was happening, he made a desperate attempt to escape. But this time, there was no way out. The police moved in swiftly, and Rabiu was finally arrested. For me, it was a moment of immense relief and triumph — a breakthrough in the case.”
From Dike’s account, locating and apprehending Rabiu took about two months and required multiple payments to the police to get their work done. This was despite relying on private professionals for the investigation.
When FIJ reached out to the Anambra State Police Command on Wednesday, Ikenga Toochukwu, the Public Relations Officer, acknowledged the inquiry. However, the command had not responded to the questions FIJ asked at press time.